Permanent Deposits of Sectionalism in American Christianity

1932 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-13
Author(s):  
Abdel Ross Wentz

About the fourth decade of the nineteenth century, a change came over the general spirit of American society. Historians have often noted the fact and they have described it and explained it in various ways. It was a time of storm and stress, a period of controversy and conflict and finally war. There was scarcely a single phase of life that was not infected. As if by some preconcerted signal the souls of men in most diverse groups and relationships suddenly became sensitive and combative. The result was one of those swift ruptures with the past that leave abiding scars in the body of society.

Slavic Review ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
pp. 782-803
Author(s):  
Luba Golburt

Beside her political and cultural legacy, Catherine II bequeathed to the nineteenth century a certain striking image of the body and spirit of the eighteenth: an aging aristocratic lady, inflexible in her behavioral routines and visibly unaware of historical change. This image was codified by Aleksandr Pushkin in The Queen of Spades and, much later, satirized by Ivan Turgenev in several of his novels. Highlighting the recurrence of these copies of Catherine the Great in nineteenth-century Russian prose, Luba Golburt interprets the narrative and historical implications of fashion and aging in this period that was fascinated with historical knowledge and imagination. The persistence of the past embodied by these figures posed a challenge to the otherwise widely embraced Hegelian notions of progress, underscoring the repetitive and ritualistic rhythms of historical experience. These figures also extended the realist narrative's historical scope and made possible a range of polyphonous temporal structures.


Prospects ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 239-262
Author(s):  
Scott MacDonald

One of the primary reasons I became interested in film studies was the seeming open-endedness of the field. Cinema was new, I reasoned, and would continue to be new, unlike other academic fields, and particularly those devoted to historical periods: as a scholar and a teacher, I would face the future, endlessly enthralled and energized by the transformation of the potential into the actual. That my development as a film scholar/teacher increasingly involved me in avant-garde film seemed quite natural — a logical extension of the attraction of film studies in general: Avant-garde film was the newest of the new, the sharpest edge of the present as it sliced into the promise of the future. Scholars in some fields may empathize with the attitude I describe, but scholars in all fields will smile at its self-defeating implications: of course, I can see now how typically American my assumptions were — as if one could maintain the excitement of youth merely by refusing to acknowledge the past! Obviously, film studies, like any other discipline, is only a field once its history takes, or is given, a recognizable shape.


Author(s):  
James E. Snead

A particularly baroque literary appearance of the Kentucky Mummy highlights the transformation of public perceptions of indigenous antiquities in the United States in the Civil War decade. An imaginary romance of Mammoth Cave, Legends of the South (Smith 1869), describes a mysterious, annual journey of a “venerable Indian” down into the cavern. Ultimately the old man disappears into its depths, never to return. Decades later the author pursues the subterranean trail, encountering marvels that include the warning Siste viator—“Stop, traveler”— chalked on the cave wall. Nearby he finds the deceased elder, reduced to a “mummy-like dessication” clad in deerskin. Armed with an amulet taken from the body he pushes onward, ultimately entering a vast sepulcher in which . . . lay the warrior tribe, in their panoply complete. Supine—with their hands crossed upon their breasts, with their faces turned upward, as if acknowledging the presence of a superior being, they lay, like the marble effigies of the knights of old upon their sarcophagi. . . . In this catacomb the author is haunted by a ghostly “Sachem” who chides: “Are you not satisfied that your cruel warfare has exterminated us from the surface of the earth? Must you follow us to these chambers of death to scatter our ashes?” The supernatural figure then describes the wars of his dead people, prophesying that those events would be repeated in post-Civil War United States. “Nations from the rising sun shall make war upon the conquerors,” he pronounces “and then shall the Southern panther rise from his lair, and avenge his wrongs.” This subterranean tale amplified the myriad accounts of the Kentucky Mummy—a discovery two generations in the past by that time. By the mid-nineteenth century such visions of indigenous antiquity were increasingly commonplace, but the linkage between these histories and current events indicate increasingly deep associations with the American landscape. It was not simply abstract indigenous history that was being co-opted, however, but the material legacy of that experience—the ruins and artifacts that were ubiquitous in the increasingly populated countryside.


2009 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-43
Author(s):  
Edward Nye

Histories of mime largely overlook one of the most remarkable theatrical phenomena of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century: the ballet-pantomime. In contrast, it is widely discussed in dance history circles, as if there were a tacit understanding that only one half of this hyphenated art mattered: the ballet rather than the pantomime. This article explores the mime component of the ballet-pantomime in order to compare and contrast it with modern mime, especially Etienne Decroux's principles and practices. Through the works of Noverre particularly (since Decroux declares himself an admirer), but with reference also to other famous and less famous eighteenth-century choreographers and dancers, Edward Nye discusses five aspects of mime: use of the body, mime and dance, mime and language, objective and subjective mime, and pedagogy. He finds differences as well as similarities between modern and eighteenth-century mime, but overall argues that there is no reason to exclude the ballet-pantomime from histories of mime. Edward Nye is Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, and University Lecturer in French. He has published on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century subjects in French literature and the arts, notably Literary and Linguistic Theories in Eighteenth-Century France (OUP, 2000), and on the literary aesthetics of sports writing, in A Bicyclette (Les Belles Lettres, 2000), and of dance, in Danse et littérature; sur quel pied danser? (ed., Rodopi, 2003).


1989 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay Ruby

This article explores the custom of post-mortem photography. In nineteenth century America, this was a socially acceptable, publicly acknowledged form of photography. Professional photographers accepted commissions, advertised the service, and held professional discussions in their journals about the practice. The images were publicly displayed in wall frames and albums. Initially, death pictures were portraits which attempted to deny death by displaying the body as if asleep, or even conscious. By the turn-of-the-century, the deceased were displayed in a casket with an increasing emphasis upon the funeral. Today, families make their own photos; circulating them in a private manner so that many people assume that the custom has been abandoned. Counselors working with the parents of children who have died provide evidence that these images can be useful in the mourning process. The findings of this study suggest that a more thorough examination of the place of death-related photographs in the management of grief would be of value.


2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-95
Author(s):  
Soline Anthore Baptiste ◽  
Nicolas P. Baptiste

AbstractDuring the twentieth century, clothing permits a real freedom of bodily movement. However, when examining past athletic activity, we must take into account the period approach to the body: liberty of movement is at the same time controlled by morality, gestures and clothing. The French term “tenue” initially referred to behaviour, but since the end of the eighteenth century concerns the manner of dressing, and later by extension, the “dignity of conduct”. In the past times concerned with “sporting” activities such as the HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts), physical appearance is affected by rules of etiquette imposed by morality and civility. From the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century, each period offers a different overview of the dress standards in relation to the different approaches to corporal identity, and the constriction first necessary for military activities becomes indivisible from the moral and physical construction. As a practitioner of the 21st century, the question raises about our relationship, not only with our bodies but also with past cultures. As demonstrated by some concrete examples, if it is desired to fully approach the ancient practices, it is therefore necessary to also adopt the garment, in the same way as the accessories.


Author(s):  
Michael Anderson ◽  
Corinne Roughley

Scotland’s population history since the middle of the nineteenth century has too often been written either at a national level or as if what happened in a particular area was unique. There has been too much focus on losses, failings, or crises, and too little on successes and improvements in people’s experiences of life. There were multiple demographic Scotlands, linked to the diversity of the country’s economy, geography, and cultures, and many successes as well as failures. The book sets Scottish demography in a wider British and Western European framework and shows how patterns and trends from the past influence the present and the future demography of the country. Scotland’s outstandingly detailed published reports, many hitherto hardly used, are briefly described


1873 ◽  
Vol 10 (114) ◽  
pp. 529-551
Author(s):  
Henry Woodward

Time with slow and measured tread moving over the buried records of the past—Time, upon whose ample store the geologist is wont to draw with an unsparing hand, seems to have accelerated his pace in this nineteenth century, and hurries onward as if his few remaining sands were well-nigh run.


1922 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 283-293
Author(s):  
William Betz

The nineteenth century was characterized by an unparalleled activity in the realm of science. When Darwin and his followers succeeded in popularizing the doctrine of evolution. an amazing impetus was given to research in almost every field of human thought and endeavor. It soon became natural to go back to first principles, to study the growth and development of all existing things, to look for causes, motives, connections, controlling forces. New sciences sprang up over night. Innumerable questions were addressed to nature by carefully arranged experiments. The bulk of scientific knowledge increased immensely. And, as if by magic, even the past gave up many of its long concealed secrets. The geologic record of the rocks became legible. It revealed upheavals extending through aeons of time. The incredibly slow unfolding of life on this globe became established by countless fossilized remains.


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